Strategies Used in Rendering Humor in Translations of “A Man Called Ove" by Fredrick Backman

Abstract

In the current study, two translations by Farnaz Taimorzuv (2017) and Hossein Tehrani (2016) of the book “A Man Called Ove” by Fredrick Backman, which is abundant in humor, were selected. The transition of humor from the source language to the target language was investigated by the syntactic strategy of Chesterman (2016). During the analysis of humor, the humorous excerpts were identified. Afterwards, the transference of humorous effects was investigated in both Persian translations. The results showed that, in translation of humor at the linguistic level, the translators have not been fully successful. Neither have they effectively rendered malapropism.  Finally, in translation of repetition and parallelism, Taimorzuv applies some strategies to transfer the humoristic effect to the target text, whereas Tehrani seems to have ignored the aesthetic values of the source text.

Keywords: Satire, humour, translation strategy, comparative study

DOI: 10.7176/JLLL/72-04

Publication date:October 31^st 2020